A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph [Paperback]

Ralph F. Voss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1990

In the spring of 1973 one of the country's most successful dramatists, William Inge, ran out of reasons to think he was any good. He went into his garage one night and shut the door, seated himself behind the wheel of his new car, and turned the key. By morning he was dead. "Death makes us all innocent," Inge had written, "and weaves all our private hurts and griefs and wrongs into the fabric of time, and makes them a part of eternity." But William Inge had it made, or so it seemed in 1962. He had written an unprecedented string of Broadway hits: Picnic, Bus Stop, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and Come Back, Little Sheba. All four plays had become successful films featuring top Hollywood stars. Inge had received a Pulitzer Prize for Picnic and an Academy Award for his screenplay, Splendor in the Grass. Even his longtime friend and mentor, Tennessee Williams, was envious of his success. Privately, Inge was miserable. His long struggle with alcoholism and profound shame over his homosexuality plagued him before, during, and after his decade of great success. As criticism of his work intensified, Inge responded with increasingly frantic attempts to please by "modernizing" his writing. He abandoned the small-town characters and settings he knew in favor of more lurid, urban subject matter. In the end, his characters lost their authentic voices, and neither critics nor audiences found his later work believable. In this first book-length literary biography of Inge, Ralph Voss peels back the veneer of public success and lays bare the private pain and isolation of the man who was called America's first authentic midwestern playwright. He draws upon interviews, memoirs, and unpublished manuscripts, letters, and papers to show how Inge's unhappy life fueled the struggles his plays depict.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The troubled life of William Inge (1913-73), America's most celebrated playwright of the 1950s, is sympathetically examined in this biography by a fellow Kansan who teaches at the University of Alabama. In his four famous plays-- Come Back Little Sheba , Picnic (for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize), Bus Stop and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (all of which were successfully filmed)--Inge explored themes of loneliness, frustration, loss, despair and the need for love within the family, themes rooted in his own unhappiness. Despite his many friendships, Inge was an angry, lonely man who struggled with homosexuality and alcoholism until his death by suicide. After an attack by Robert Brustein in Harper's in 1958, audiences, too, rejected his plays. As his career declined, he made desperate, unsuccessful attempts to restore his equilibrium--a flirtation with the occult and a half-hearted conversion to Catholicism. In the end, "Inge showed that rural Midwesterners could be as vulnerable to life's upsets as the most committed of city dwellers." Photos.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A first-rate literary biography." -- Western American Literature

"A good book, a re-seeing of a shadowy yet important figure in American theater." -- Milwaukee Journal

"Strongly recommended." -- Choice

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: University Press Of Kansas (September 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700604421
• ISBN-13: 978-0700604425
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #520,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb biography, November 28, 2003

By 

Charlotte Hinger (Hoxie, KS USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph (Paperback)

Ralph Voss's A Life of William Inge is a superb biography with impeccable balance between academic integrity and compassion for the subject. The work is that of a superior scholar who is a relentless detective. Dr. Voss has written a candid and painfully honest analysis of the complex and secretive Inge . Every last scrap of information has been unearthed in compiling the bibliography for this book. A less able author might have been tempted to exploit the anguish of Inge's tortured sexuality to construct a tawdry narrative concentrating on his personal life to the exclusion of an examination of his creative genius and contribution to American drama. Instead, Voss opted to explore all aspects of Inge's damaged psyche and in the process has simultaneously compiled an accurate and fascinating glimpse of post World War II middle class American morality.
The illusive, perplexing Inge was not an easy subject. A Life of William Inge belongs on the shelf of any person interested in the history of the stage, and is absolutely a must buy, gotta have book, for those attempting to write biographies. Not only is it the ultimate standard for combining flawless research skills with a compelling narrative, it's an exquisitely objective account of a lonely troubled man who went from winning the Pulitzer Prize to taking his own life.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very effective portrait painting, February 28, 2002

By 

J. Remington "John Remington" (Adams, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph (Paperback)

Within reading the first few pages of this well researched and illuminating biography of one of America's finest playwrights, it becomes obvious that author Ralph Voss is first and formost a major fan of William Inge, the bard of Kansas. That is always a prerequisite for embarking on a biographical journey. However, Voss' fandom does get in his way frequently as he unsuccessfully confuses is goal: is he a fan or a critic. This is really a small matter as the book does provide a fascinating insight into William Inge, a man whose private nature makes him a shadowy enigma at best.

Even almost thirty years after his death, Voss (writing in 1988), finds it very difficult to focus on Inge's personal life. The book doesn't provide as effective an insight into the writing process or into the man's inter workings as say Leverich's recent biography of Tennessee Williams has. This is due in no small part to the simple but important fact most of Inge's surviving friends and family didn't really know him.

This leaves Voss with little choice but to focus on the work.

Voss makes it apparent that reading a biography of Inge is ultimately anti climatic as the thin layer of fiction in his work barely covers its ultimately autobiographical quality. Anyone who has read, watched or produced Inge's work will immediately recognize the forms, characters and language and situations relfected in his life. Voss proves most successful in drawing, enhancing and exploring those connections. This holds especially as the older,increasingly cynical and bitter Inge attempts to answer his critics (especially Robert Brustein!) and create plays reflective of the volatile 1960's and early 1970's. His latter plays failed perhaps because Inge tried to write outside of his strengths. Watching his bittersweet portraits of midwestern life crumble to dark and violent scenes of depravity really does fill the reader with a sense of sadness and loss. William Inge, like many great artists, decomposed in front of an audience.

Voss does admit that perhaps while Inge was not a great playwright in the sense he did not revolutionize the form as Brecht, Beckett, Odets, Williams, Miller and Wilder did, he did possess an uncanny ability to capture realistic dialouge.

Inge's sepia toned portraits of midwestern manners and life have been overshadowed by the canon of Williams, Miller and O'Neil to be sure. Voss makes the successful case that Inge stands as a proud equal to the more illuminary authors of America's rich dramatic tradition.

A fine read well worth the time and effort about a fine literary artist desperately in need of rediscovering. Even if it doesn't know whether it is a biography or critical evaluation.